


Nothing Breaks Like a Heart

by Moonriser (phanofstars)



Category: Homestuck
Genre: A relationship falling apart, Angst, Jake's perspective, M/M, Sadstuck, Song fic, based on their canon relationship, very minor mention of a possible eating disorder
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-13
Updated: 2019-05-13
Packaged: 2020-03-02 21:32:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,152
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18819424
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phanofstars/pseuds/Moonriser
Summary: Jake thinks of them as two meteors circling each other then colliding, drawn together and pulled apart, both breaking slightly more each time they hit





	Nothing Breaks Like a Heart

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by [Nothing Breaks Like a Heart](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMoHZUp1qy0%E2%80%9D) by Mark Ronson feat. Miley Cyrus

_This world can hurt you_  
_It cuts you deep and leaves a scar_  
_Things fall apart, but nothing breaks like a heart_  
_And nothing breaks like a heart_

\------------

It all started so well- or at least it seemed to.  
The adventures in the crypts and mounds of their respective planets seemed never ending, always something new to do, more treasure to find. There were matching masks and Lara Croft shorts, mowing down enemies in a deadly tandem, a boy with orange eyes who treated Jake like he was something special, like he never wanted them to be apart.  
If Jake had stopped lying to himself he would have seen them, the warning signs that had been there from the beginning.

TT: Where did you go? Did you forget something down in the crypts?  
TT: I wish you had told me you were going, I worry about you. 

It would take so few words to fix this, but they were words that he couldn’t say. He had grown up alone, done everything alone but now there was another person around- another person who was alway there.  
It took Jake a while to figure out what the tightness in his chest was. At first he thought it was just a side effect of dating someone, but no because it happened around Jane and Roxy too. The only time it abated was when he was alone, but those moments were rare- and Jake needed them, craved them. They were the moments when he felt like he was truly himself again, moments when he could relax but with Dirk around he rarely got them.

TT: Did I miss you saying that you were going somewhere?  
TT: Jake it feels like you’re abandoning me on purpose.

Dirk asks if he’s happy and he doesn’t know how to answer.  
Dirk asks if he loves him and Jake can’t answer that one either.  
Jake says that he’s going out and Dirk pulls his shoes on and grabs his sword and asks where they are going, and again Jake doesn’t know what to say to that.

TT: I know I’m not great at the physical contact stuff, but did you need to run away like that?  
TT: Come back, Jake.

The tattoo had been a mistake, but it was hard to say no to Dirk (that was probably part of the problem). Jake hadn’t really wanted one but Dirk had been excited and insistent, and when the needle had finally finished mutilating his arm and he saw it in all it’s terrible glory, Jake had tried to squash his own disappointment under Dirk’s absolute joy.  
He wants to cover it up, to get it removed, but Dirk loves it, loves the fact that they match.  
To Jake it just feels like another rope tying him to Dirk, making sure he can never get free.

TT: Could you stop running away from me?  
TT: I know you’re avoiding me.

It’d be fine- it was fine. Everything was fine. (It wasn’t it really wasn’t but Jake refused to believe that and if he just hoped hard enough then surely all of their problems would just go away, right?.) Take a breath, let it out. Message Jane- Jane would listen. Jane was such a good friend like that, although her answers were getting shorter and curter each time he messaged her. Maybe she was annoyed at him? Jake wouldn’t be surprised- that seemed to be all he can do, make people annoyed at him and then get scared and run away.  
He knows he sounds like a broken record in all his messages but it is still a bitter blow when Jane stops responding to him.

TT: Jake?  
TT: For fucks sake where have you gone, I’ve been looking for you for hours.

Jake is sick of adventures. He’s sick of pretending to be brave (because that was what he did, what he always did. He was a coward through and through). He’s sick of Dirk- and that was wrong wasn’t it? You’re not supposed to get sick of your boyfriend. But Dirk was always there, always around, and Jake could never quite work up the courage to ask for some alone time fearing that Dirk would take it as a rejection and Dirk really didn’t handle rejection very well.  
So instead Jake runs away, avoids messages, and spends large amounts of time hoping that Dirk wouldn’t find him (it always seems to work when he does that).

TT: Jake could you just come and fucking talk to me?  
TT: It’s been days and no one seems to know where you are.

Sometimes everything seems fine. Sometimes they’ll huddle up and watch a movie, all cuddled together. Sometimes they’ll spar, letting out pent up frustrations and quips and making each other laugh. Sometimes they’ll just lose themselves in each other for hours.  
But then there are the fights. The cold silences when Jake creeps back into their shared house after days away. The feeling of being watched, of being needed, of never being alone.  
This isn’t what Jake wanted.

TT: Jane and Roxy say that you’re not with them and that they haven't heard from you in weeks.  
TT: Jake could you stop lying to me?

Jake thinks it is ironic that Dirk is a heart player, irony that Dirk should be proud of, and then he thinks of the game’s meaning of the word Prince and suddenly it isn’t ironic at all. Because Dirk is doing exactly as his title suggests that he would, destroying heart. Destroying Jake’s heart to be exact.  
And it’s not like Jake can’t see the cracks between them, the cracks they are making in themselves and in each other. He’s probably destroying Dirk just as much as Dirk is destroying him. More than once Jake comes back to find Dirk sitting quietly in their room with tear tracks down his cheeks, or curled up in a bed he can’t seem to move from, or so lost in a project or distraction that Jake can see that he hasn’t been eating.  
(And he feels so guilty each and every time- but still he leaves because he has to, at this point it feels like self-preservation, like the only way he can deal with this all is by running away which isn’t really dealing with it at all, just putting it off and off and off until the all the things Jake is putting off are piling up around him, weighing down his chest and making it so he can’t breathe and why can’t he just bloody talk to Dirk! Why is he so useless and pathetic and-)

TT: I don’t know what I did to make you hate me.  
TT: Jake, come on, give me a hint here.

Jake screams in the cold silence of the mound, earth surrounding him on all sides, and feels like he’s being buried alive, like he’s choking. There’s a pit of misery that has buried itself deep within his stomach, deep within his soul. He can’t bloody breathe, air scratching its way into his lungs but there isn’t enough of it and he’s gasping, heaving in this dark tunnel on his dead planet and he wonders offhandedly if this is how he goes, if Dirk will find his body down here as cold as the stone that surrounds him. Tears spring from his eyes and there is the clawing of sobs in his throat.  
He punches the rigid stone of the tunnel, a bad punch- Dirk was alway better a fisticuffs than him, no matter what he likes to pretend- and his knuckles sting. He does in again and again and again, driving all his anger into the wall (he’s not sure who he’s angrier at, Dirk for making him feel like this or himself for letting it happen). There’s a red stain on the wall by the time he calms down, throat raw and face swollen.  
When he goes back Dirk treats him with the usual silence, face carved in stone. He takes Jake’s hands in his and washes the bloody knuckles slowly, carefully, then bandages them up. They don’t talk about it.  
(Sometimes the weight of the things they don’t talk about hangs heavy around Jake’s neck, and the cold silences sound deafeningly loud).

TT: Roxy says that I should apologize.  
TT: I need to see you.

He never wants to fight another bloody underling again. Dirk had made him do it, even when Jake didn’t think he could- or at least not take down that many at once, and this time he’d been right with a new fading scar on his arm to prove it. Jake kind of wishes that the claw had landed a bit further up and swiped through his tattoo.  
Dirk had looked so disappointed when he’d bandaged him up (it had hurt far more than the underling’s claws had, felt more like a katana through the heart).

TT: I don’t even know why I bother asking anymore, but Jake-  
TT: Where did you go this time.

Dirk tries to talk about it once, stutteringly and in the dead of night when they’re curled up after a movie that Dirk had made fun of the whole way through (Jake had tried not to take that personally). Dirk turns his face away in the dark of the room and spills his heart out for Jake to see: his hurt, his worry, his confusion. It’s the most vulnerable that Jake has ever heard him.  
He supposes it could have worked out differently if he’d have been brave. If he’d have followed Dirk’s example and actually talked about it, his feeling of being drowned in Dirk. If he hadn’t been a coward. And he hates himself, hates himself for not talking, relives the moment for months in his dreams, imagines every possible scenario other than the one terrible choice he made.  
(That when Dirk had turned to him for an answer after baring his soul to Jake, Jake had done anything other than pretend to be asleep.)  
Dirk had never tried again. Jake didn’t blame him.

TT: I don’t understand.  
TT: Do you just not like me anymore?

Some nights they crash back together, pent up frustration transferred into battling tongues and wet cheeks and clawed backs and in the quiet afterwards filled with just the sounds of their gentle breathing, Jake stares up at the distant ceiling and wonders what would happen if he left and didn’t come back, if he broke this cycle that he is stuck in. (Dirk sleeps tucked into Jake’s neck with an arm looped gently around his waist and it feels suffocating).  
Jake thinks of them as two meteors circling each other then colliding, drawn together and pulled apart, both breaking slightly more each time they hit (and it feels like that, each and every time- like Jake is falling apart, like the things tying him to Dirk are ripping more and more of him away every time he leaves and he doesn’t think that there is much more of him remaining to be broken, doesn’t think that there is much more of Dirk remaining to be broken).

TT: I’m not mad.  
TT: At least message me so I know that you’re safe.

Jake lies about where he’s been and Dirk lies about not being upset.  
Dirk is terrified of him leaving, Jake is terrified of staying.  
AR doesn’t help, driving a wedge between them, widening the pre-existing cracks.  
He could fight for this, for them, he know- but Jake is bloody sick of fighting and he doesn’t really know what ‘them’ is.  
He could talk to Dirk. He should talk to Dirk. He should have talked to Dirk months ago, before it got this bad. (He should have talked to Dirk when Dirk talked to him).  
But that would take courage, it takes courage either way, to stay and talk or to leave and break all the chains holding them together, and Jake English is a coward.

TT: Jake, where are you?  
TT: Talk to me, please.

He doesn’t know why he’s crying (he does, but it is easier to pretend that he doesn’t, easier to pretend he isn’t broken, easier to pretend he isn’t scared).  
Was this what relationships were? Was this what love was? If so Jake wasn’t sure he really wanted it.

TT: I’m sorry.  
TT: Please come back

\------------

Jake blames himself when Dirk ends it, blames himself for making Jane annoyed at him, blames himself for making things uncomfortable for Roxy. He cuts himself off from everyone- they’re better off without him anyway- and runs away, because if there is one thing that he knows he’s good at it is running away, no matter if he sucks at everything else.  
(And in the silence of his dead planet he can almost hear the stutter of his broken heart).

 

**Author's Note:**

> *quietly sobbing over Jake and Dirk's canon relationship*


End file.
